It’s Time to Stop the Conflation of ISIS With Putin

Frankly, I am sick of hearing ISIS and Vladimir Putin spoken of in one breath. Not only does it reflect a complete lack of education and poor judgment from many western policy makers and media commentators, but it is extremely dangerous and provocative. Ever since Barack Obama described ISIS and Russia as the two main threats the ‘west’ had to deal with at the NATO summit last July, the mainstream western media has taken it and run with it. ISIS = evil = Putin. It is extremely perturbing that this concept is still being promoted in media. This was Cristina Odone (The Daily Telegraph and formerly The New Statesman) on the popular BBC Question Time programme on 11th June in response to the question: “When will we stop ISIS fascism?”

Seriously?!

I think when we are so confident about where we stand, about what we believe in, that they can sense that there’s no crack in our wall. I think that right now what ISIS does and actually what Putin does in his information campaign, is they sense that we’re really insecure about who we are, we’re really insecure about what we believe and so they just go for it and they lure young women from the east end of London, they lure young men who feel dissatisfied in Bradford. I think we’re not offering a counter narrative that is strong enough and appealing enough…it’s about freedom and it’s about prosperity.

Don’t worry Cristina, the ‘west’ does indeed have a narrative, and one which you are promoting. A narrative not based on any facts or understanding of the situation in Ukraine or of the Slavic world, but instead a vague idea that Russian society is somehow repressed and that Putin’s’ regime’ has ‘invaded’ Ukraine. To compare the savage terrorism of ISIS in the Middle East to the civil war in Ukraine (which is in part funded and promoted by the EU and US) is ludicrous, reckless and has got to stop. What it does, in fact, is to undermine global cooperation against Islamist extremism; cooperation which Russia has actively participated in since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. All the progress made in this regard between Bush and Putin has been completely abandoned by Obama and his anti-Russian rhetoric. Diplomacy has gone out of the window.

Whether intentional or not, a division is being created between the 'good' western world and the 'evil' Russia. The ground is being laid for World War 3, and if the rhetoric doesn't change, this Cold War will warm up very soon.

Anyone is free to republish, copy, and redistribute the text in this content (but not the images or videos) in any medium or format, with the right to remix, transform, and build upon it, even commercially, as long as they provide a backlink and credit to Russia Insider. It is not necessary to notify Russia Insider. Licensed Creative Commons.